Many nationalities traditionally incorporate unleavened flatbread into meals. For example, roti (also called “chapatti”) is a staple food in many South Asian and Asian countries, as well as in other parts the world. Similarly, tortillas are a staple food in Mexico and other Central American countries. While the basic ingredients used to prepare both tortillas and roti are very simple—generally, flour, water and oil and, optionally, salt—the process of making these flatbreads is time consuming, especially since during most meals each person consumes two or more pieces.
The making of flatbreads has traditionally been part of the domestic duties of women in a household, especially with extended families that include older women or girls. However, as family size decreases, women of all ethnic backgrounds enter the workplace, and/or young professionals remain single longer into adulthood, the labor intensive nature of preparing foodstuffs such as rotis and tortillas has made it less possible to make flatbread on demand in many households. Store-bought flatbreads have become widely available, but these nonetheless often lack the flavor and quality of freshly made. Moreover, even though they might be working outside the home and lack the time required to make batches of roti, tortillas etc., people often desire to provide their families with homemade food instead of that purchased from stores to evoke feelings of cultural significance.
Previous attempts have been proposed for in-home machines to make rotis and chapatis. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,630,358 (hereafter the '358 patent, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety) describes an in-home roti maker with a dough mixing station and four circular rotating platens upon which individual pieces of flatbread dough are dispensed and flattened. The flattened dough pieces are then inverted and placed on a conveyor for cooking. The machine disclosed in the '358 patent, among other things, requires a large footprint that makes it unsuitable for most residential kitchens.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,820,221 (hereafter the '221 patent, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety) is a more recent attempt to provide a machine to make flatbreads on demand in a residential kitchen setting. Notably, the '221 patent focuses on the supposed difficulty of measuring ingredients in the right amounts and includes features that certainly add to the cost and complexity of the machine disclosed therein. Such features include a number of sensors that appear to precisely dispense the raw material amounts and adjust the various aspects of the resulting flatbread, such as in texture, thickness and the like, and the resulting machine incorporates a number of “fail safe” features to allow a novice cook to create edible flatbreads. Since there are usually only about three ingredients in basic unleavened flatbreads (flour, water and oil and optionally, salt), and these ingredients are very inexpensive, the extensive engineering features of the machine disclosed in the '221 patent, as well as the related U.S. Pat. Nos. 9,125,421, 9,125,422 and US Patent Publication Nos. 2015/0181897, 2015/0181896, 2015/0181895, 2015/0181894 and 2015/0181893 (all the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties), would appear to be an overly complicated solution to making unleavened flatbread in a residential kitchen environment. In short, it would appear unnecessary to build expensive fail safe electronics into a household appliance that uses low cost ingredients to make a simple food product. Unlike the manual mixing of flatbread, the dough is mixed one dough ball at a time. This may result in a dough quality that is not similar to the batch dough produced by the batch mixing of flatbread.
Similarly, US Patent Publication No. 2015/0044340, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference, also presents a fairly complex solution to making flatbread products at home. In the '340 publication, a flatbread dough is incorporated into a single use capsule. The machine of the '340 publication is purported to be fully automatic, requiring virtually no user effort outside of supplying the capsules. As discussed previously, during most meals, several pieces of flatbread, such as roti and tortillas are consumed by each person. With a single capsule required for each flatbread piece, much storage space is needed with this machine. The dough capsules, which have a shelf life of up to 6 weeks, also require refrigeration during the entire storage time from manufacturing, to the grocery store, to the kitchen environment. Moreover, each capsule will be priced at a high individual cost. For tortillas, this cost per piece is at least 5 times more than store bought tortillas cost, and is at least 10 times more than that of homemade. For rotis, the cost is at least 3 times more than store bought, and is at least 8 times that of homemade. Moreover, considerable environmental waste would be caused from disposal of the non-biodegradable dough capsules if use of this product becomes widespread, which reduces the suitability of this solution for widespread use.
There remains a need for a simple machine that can allow “homemade” flatbreads such as, e.g., roti and tortillas and the like to be made in a residential kitchen environment. The present disclosure provides for this and other benefits.